Jennifer Davis: Paramedic responds by ground and air to those in need

When Jennifer Davis was an officer with the University of Georgia Police Department, she wanted to learn how to render aid to people she came across who were injured or in medical distress.

“When you’re the first person on the scene, there’s nothing worse than not knowing what to do,” Davis said. “So, I went to EMT school to enhance my ability of what I could do on the scene.”

With her newfound knowledge and training, she knew where in the spectrum of public safety she needed to be.

Davis left the police department as a detective in 2000 to work for National EMS and serves the Athens area as a paramedic captain.

“I did not really have a plan coming out of high school,” Davis said. “I went to college for several years, but never really found anything that I truly wanted to do. Then I became a police officer and realized that I truly enjoyed being in public safety.

“Paramedic was where I truly found my niche. It is what I feel like I’m called to do. I’ve been working in EMS for 15 years and I can’t imagine doing anything else.”

Davis was born in Athens when her parents were in graduate school at UGA. She grew up in Decatur and spent her high school years in Powder Springs, where she attended McEachern High School.

Davis moved back to Athens in order to attend UGA.

Upon being hired by NEMS, she was assigned to the agency’s Rockdale County region, where she worked alongside another paramedic who would later become her husband.

Ronnie Davis remains in NEMS’s Rockdale County Division as paramedic commander, and the couple lives in Gillsville with their four children who range from 4-14 years old.

The family attends Air Line Baptist Church in Gainesville, where Davis volunteers with the children’s ministry.

Davis transferred to Athens about four years ago.

Davis has put her advanced medical knowledge to work as an instructor in basic life support, advanced cardiac life support, pre-hospital trauma life support and emergency pediatric care. She also is certified in advanced medical life support, neonatal resuscitation and pediatric advanced life support. She became a critical care paramedic in 2010.

Davis uses those skills on a regular basis, but never more so than when she’s called upon to fly with AirLife Georgia out of Gainesville, which provides helicopter transport to the most critically ill or injured patients.

Davis has worked part-time with AirLife Georgia for just over a year, and with the service she knows that when she’s called upon to fly somewhere she’ll be drawing upon all of her professional insight.

In addition to having a pilot and paramedic, the helicopter’s crew includes a nurse with whom Davis can perform even more advanced procedures such as intubations and maintaining patients on ventilators while en route to the hospital.

“Generally when we’re called, it’s because it’s really bad,” Davis said, and patients need to get to the hospital as quickly as possible under the best possible care.

It takes about half the time to fly a patient by helicopter to a hospital than it does driving, she said.

Davis was unable to narrow down any of her experiences as a paramedic as being among the most memorable. They are all memorable in their own way.

“We are always ready to respond no matter what the call,” Davis said. “We run everything from gunshot victims, stabbings, suicides, heart attacks and strokes to babies with fevers and overwhelmed new moms that don’t know how to cope.”

She added, “And sometimes the lonely older person who calls every day with a complaint because they just need someone to talk to.”

Wherever the ambulance or helicopter takes her, Davis is convinced that she’s doing her calling.

“We meet people on what is generally one of the worst days of their lives,” she said. “We come in and do what we can to fix it. Sometimes we can totally change the course of how their lives will end up or even if they live at all. Sometimes all we can do is comfort them and do what we can to ease their pain. Either way we are there.”